The Problem

The assistant can answer questions from your docs, your URLs, and your Q&A pairs. But a store isn't docs — it's a living catalog of products with prices that change, variants that sell out, and new items added every week.

Ask a docs-based assistant "do you have this jacket in navy, size medium, in stock?" and it can't answer. The information isn't in a knowledge base article — it's in your store's product data, and it changes by the hour.

This is the gap between a support bot and a shopping assistant. Product Catalog Sync closes it.

What You Get

Automatic catalog ingestion. Connect your store once and the assistant pulls in your full product catalog — titles, descriptions, prices, variants (size, colour, material), SKUs, availability, and images. No manual data entry, no copy-pasting product details into a knowledge base.

Kept in sync. When you add a product, change a price, or a variant sells out, the assistant's knowledge updates automatically. It never quotes a price that changed last week or recommends something that's out of stock.

Variant- and stock-aware answers. "Is the navy one available in medium?" gets a real answer, because the assistant knows the variant matrix and current inventory — not just that a product called "jacket" exists.

Multilingual product answers. Product details are presented in the visitor's language. A French shopper asks about a product and gets the answer in French, drawn from the same synced catalog — no separate translated catalog to maintain.

Why This Matters

It's the foundation for everything e-commerce. Product recommendations, "what's in stock," shopping guidance, cart-aware answers — none of it is possible without the assistant knowing your live catalog. This feature is the platform the rest of the e-commerce capabilities are built on.

It turns the assistant into a salesperson. A support bot deflects tickets. A catalog-aware assistant answers pre-purchase questions — the questions that decide whether someone buys. "Which of these is better for cold weather?" is a sale waiting to happen, and it can only be answered if the assistant knows the products.

It removes the maintenance burden. The alternative — manually maintaining product information in a knowledge base — is unworkable for a store with hundreds of SKUs and constant change. Sync makes the catalog self-maintaining.

How It Works

During the Shopify or WooCommerce app install, the assistant requests read access to your product catalog. Once connected, it performs an initial full sync and then keeps current through periodic refresh and store webhooks — so a price change or a sold-out variant is reflected quickly, without a manual re-index.

You control what's included. Hide specific products or collections from the assistant, or limit it to your active catalog. Product data is used to answer questions in the moment; you decide the scope.

The synced catalog feeds the same multilingual pipeline as the rest of your content, so product answers respect the visitor's detected language automatically.

What This Replaces

Manually pasting product descriptions into a knowledge base. Out-of-date answers that quote last month's prices. Telling a ready-to-buy visitor "please check the product page" instead of just answering their question.

On the Roadmap

This feature is planned, and ships alongside the Companin Shopify and WooCommerce apps. When it lands:

Shopify catalog sync first — full product, variant, price, stock, and image ingestion
WooCommerce sync second — same data model, adapted to the WooCommerce REST API
Webhook-driven updates so price and inventory changes reflect quickly, not on a slow re-index
Per-collection and per-product visibility controls, with multilingual product answers throughout

Once live, the assistant stops being limited to what you wrote down and starts knowing what you actually sell — the prerequisite for [product recommendations](/roadmap/product-recommendations) and every other shopping feature.